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British/Southern followers will probably have missed all this but the four week semi lockdown in NI (schools and shops are open) was due to end at midnight tonight and the Executive has spent the last week wrangling over what to do next. 1/
The Deputy First Minister, who attended a funeral and travelled to Dublin in breach of the earlier Covid regs, appeared on telly on Sunday morning and said the Executive was working on the relaxation of the restrictions. 2/
She suddenly reversed her position on Monday (Dublin calling) and joined all the other NI government parties in calling for the regulations to be extended, not relaxed, for two weeks. 3/
The DUP used the cross community veto power to stop a proposal from an Ulster Unionist Minister to extend the regs. Twice. (I'm not making this up.) The ring leader of that move was a creationist fundamentalist who banned gay men from giving blood when he was health minister. 4/
Same guy cost the public purse a fortune in legal fees pointlessly defending court challenges to the ban. More recently he accused Nationalists (ie Catholics) of spreading the virus. 5/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/north-covid-row-after-dup-minister-claims-virus-rates-higher-in-nationalist-than-unionist-areas-1.4384116.5/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/north-covid-row-after-dup-minister-claims-virus-rates-higher-in-nationalist-than-unionist-areas-1.4384116.5/
It now turns out that the legal advice the Executive gave everyone about the date of the expiration of the regulations was 24 hours out. They don't expire tonight at midnight, but tomorrow instead. 6/
That only came to light after a lawyer contacted @SJAMcBride yesterday pointing this out, forcing the Executive to issue new legal guidance this morning. 7/ https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride/status/1326861896415399938?s=19
Meanwhile pubs and restaurants are threatening to open anyway because - and who could blame them - they've had enough. 8/ https://twitter.com/BBCJayneMcC/status/1326853250226790401?s=19
Most of them haven't yet got the financial support they were promised, despite the DUP run Department of the Economy accidentally paying 452 people £10k each earlier in the year, including several Sinn Fein politicans and at least one DUP landlord. That's £4.5m of public money 9/
Of course the DUP are no strangers to spaffing public money at certain classes of business - and trying to cover it up when found out. Take #RHI for example...10/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal
Or the Northern branch of #NAMA, #ProjectEagle. (Aided and abetted by, amongst others, FG Finance Minister, one Michael Noonan and, yes, the Shinners) 11/ https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-giving-dup-soft-landing-over-project-eagle-1.2806587
Just a few weeks ago another scandal came to light, again courtesy of @SJAMcBride 12/ https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/cash-wind-how-arlene-foster-hiked-another-green-subsidy-and-gb-public-will-pay-most-ps5-billion-bill-3001146
Meanwhile the DUP is pretending to care about business despite campaigning and voting for a hard no deal Brexit, which will wreck businesses. They're simultaneously claiming to be all concerned about mental illness & poverty despite presiding over decades of both in the West. 13/
This place is a rotten, corrupt, useless, toxic hole which eats its young and turns everything into a sectarian bun fight. It always was, despite some of the best people on the planet living here. The sooner the term "Northern Ireland" passes into history the better. End/
